Official Review: Cinnamon Twigs: The Life and Pseudocide ...

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RussetDivinity
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Official Review: Cinnamon Twigs: The Life and Pseudocide ...

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[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Cinnamon Twigs: The Life and Pseudocide of a Celebrity" by Darren Freebury-Jones.]
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The best genre I can think of for Cinnamon Twigs: The Life and Pseudocide of a Celebrity by Darren Freebury-Jones would be that of fictional memoir. It tells the story of the fictional Daniel Mace, an actor and director, from childhood to adulthood. The idea of a fictional memoir is something that I have not encountered, and I was sure I would be fascinated by this (to me, at least) new way of looking at character-based writing. However, I found myself bored by the novel, and I’m afraid I can only give it 2 out of 4 stars.

The reason I give it two stars rather than one is because there were some genuinely good moments. There was a scene at a funeral, where Daniel and his mother are nearly driving each other into a giggling fit, that is likely my favorite scene in the whole book. It shows the relationship I think Freebury-Jones was trying to portray throughout the book, one of two people who may not always get along but who can come close together in difficult moments, one that is unconventional but beautiful in that unconventionality. Later in the book, there are other good scenes between Daniel and his wife, and those scenes nearly made me reconsider my opinion of the book because they were such perfect moments.

However, I can’t in good conscience give this book three stars. The prose alternates between overly poetic language and sentence fragments, which make the prose seem simplistic in comparison to the earlier, purpler prose. There are pages in the book which are nothing but untagged dialogue (only between two people, thankfully). On a larger scale, there are whole chapters that feel like nothing but a summary of Daniel’s life, and the scenes that stick out from those don’t always feel like they deserve to be scenes, as opposed to other moments that could have been fleshed out. Some of these scenes didn’t feel like they were part of a memoir but part of a novel, breaking the conceit that the book was presumably built on. The narration also jumped around a fair bit, and there were times when I wasn’t sure how much time had passed between scenes or what point in Daniel’s life we were reading.

I was also unimpressed by the characters. Freebury-Jones often brings up character traits in the narration without showing them in the characters’ interactions, or if the traits are shown, they are usually retold to the reader through the narration multiple times. In addition, the characters feel very formulaic. There is the protagonist, the wacky best friend, the ex-girlfriend who’s impossible to forget, and the wife who is too good to be true. The mother is somewhere between the unconventional but loving mother and the hateful mother who shows just how far in his life the protagonist has come from his childhood. We are told that she is bipolar, but the character simply didn’t feel true.

The novel deals largely with the theme of fame changing a person, but it that theme only appears in the latter half, and even then it is only spoken about a few times. I would have much preferred it be treated with less of a heavy hand when it did appear and to have it show up slightly more often. It very nearly worked, but seemed rather sudden. Other themes the novel touches on include questioning everything in life and the inevitability of death. The latter appeared in the story itself and again very nearly worked (this time it didn’t seem sudden but it felt as though it could have been worked in a bit better), while the former was used mainly for philosophical discussions between characters.

It’s entirely possible that I’ve misrepresented the novel. Freebury-Jones’s prose is not to my liking, but that’s partly a matter of taste, and while I found the characters tiresome, that’s also a matter of the sorts of characters I normally read. The themes are interesting things to think about and, for the most part, work well with the story itself. However, for a genre that sounds as promising as that of a fictional memoir does, Cinnamon Twigs is rather disappointing.

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